Sunday, November 29, 2015

Back in the early 1980s, I was invited to run a feature-writing
course for journalism students at what was then Wellington Polytechnic (now
part of Massey University). The three full-time tutors didn’t think they had
the requisite experience to teach this form of journalism, and in hindsight I’m
not sure I did either. But for six weeks or so, one afternoon a week, I would
trudge up to the Polytech and try to pass on to the students what little I had
learned about writing feature-length stories.

At the end of the course, the tutors were keen to know which
students I thought stood out as potential feature writers. I named two. One, if
I recall correctly, was the daughter of the poet Lauris Edmond; the other was
Steve Braunias. At the mention of the latter name, the tutors almost literally
recoiled in astonishment. They’d written Braunias off as hopeless. In fact he
was a classic square peg in a round hole – stubbornly resistant to all attempts
to make him write in the formulaic manner required for news stories, but clever
and funny when he was freed from stylistic constraints.

Braunias of course went on to become a high-profile writer
and satirist and is now feted in literary and media circles. I’m not aware of
anyone else on that feature-writing course who has made an impact in
journalism. So while I take no credit for Braunias turning out the way he did
(if my tutoring had been inspirational, others on the course would presumably
have shone too), at least my judgment was vindicated.

I mention this episode because Braunias himself recalled it in
a recent interview with an admiring Duncan Greive on the online news and
commentary site The Spinoff.But it’s what Braunias went on to say that
interested me. Here’s the relevant passage, from the section of the interview
in which Braunias talked about that journalism course:

“I couldn’t tell a news story. I had no nose in news. I
didn’t have the hunger for it, or the gall. I just didn’t have what it takes
whatsoever. I was just kind of a dimwit.

“The feature writing course, that was appealing and I kind
of got saved there in a way. I got first place in the feature writing thing,
and it was marked by a guy from the Listener
magazine, Karl du Fresne. He became a bit of a shocking, right wing, redneck,
reactionary goose. It was a bit of a shame that my saviour was writing opinions
so inimical to me, and so awful to read.”

Braunias seems a bit conflicted here. He calls me his
saviour, but in the same breath denounces me because of my supposedly loony
right-wing views. The way he tells it, I was sagacious enough to recognise his
talent, but then something mysterious happened that apparently fried my brain
and turned me into a drooling right-wing imbecile. A goose, to be precise. Pardon
me, but how does that work?

Let me attempt an explanation. In the circles Braunias moves
in, namely the Auckland media priesthood, the only legitimate journalism is
that which conforms to a left-wing template. Deviation is heresy and must be countered
with scorn and ridicule.

The rationale is that if someone is right wing, it can only
be because they’re stupid or nasty or both. (The term redneck, which Braunias
used to describe me, unmistakeably implies rank ignorance as well as
conservatism.) This is the smug, Pharisaical way in which members of the
Auckland media elite dismiss any opinions that don’t concur with their own.

Braunias is not the only offender and certainly not the
worst. Others include Russell Brown – Auckland’s leading prig – and former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald.

My blog in September on the death of Graham Brazier, from
Hello Sailor, triggered a frenzy among the left-wing Auckland twitterati, Brown
and Macdonald joining the pack with gusto.

I committed the sin of questioning the media’s deification
of Brazier and suggested Hello Sailor weren’t the band they were cracked up to
be. To the Auckland media elite, this was heresy on a grand scale. But rather
than address any of my arguments, they ran the line that I must be thick as
well as reactionary. (They were conspicuously silent, surprisingly, on
Brazier’s record as an abuser of his female partners, although I’ve no doubt
that they all see themselves as staunchly pro-women.)

“Christ he’s an idiot,” tweeted Brown, referring to me. Elsewhere,
on his Hard News site, he called me an ass. This is apparently the only way Brown
can explain the fact that someone else sees things differently from him.

“Careful, we mustn’t speak ill of the brain dead,” tweeted
Macdonald. Giovanni Tiso and Philip Matthews weighed in with similarly puerile jibes,
yapping like toy poodles. Braunias chimed in too. All the usual suspects, in
other words.

In another Twitter feed, Macdonald called me an asshole. This
guy’s the New Zealand head of a major publishing company, for heaven’s sake,
and here he was indulging in the digital equivalent of poking his tongue out
and making faces, like the leader of a school playground gang.

These people fondly think of themselves as liberals, but in
truth they’re anything but. Quite the reverse: they’re bigots whose carefully
constructed liberal façade conceals an angry, sneering intolerance of any
opinions that conflict with their own. I think they're gutless, too. They share their views with people they know
will agree with them, because there’s safety in numbers. They hunt in a pack and compete to come up with the cleverest putdown of anyone they don't like.

And here’s another thing. If the explanation for my deviant,
redneck opinions is that I’m too stupid to know any better, should they be
mocking me? Wouldn’t it be more consistent with their sanctimonious
pseudo-liberalism if they took pity on me? Shouldn’t they, as caring people, be
wrapping me in a warm embrace of inclusiveness?

On second thoughts, scratch that. The thought is too
frightening to contemplate.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

I first came across the name John Egenes in 2013, when I
reviewed New Zealand country singer-songwriter Donna Deans’ superb album Tyre Tracks and Broken Hearts. While it
was indubitably Deans’ album, Egenes’ fingerprints were all over it too. He not
only produced it but wrote one of the songs, played several backing instruments
(acoustic guitar, pedal steel guitar, dobro and mandolin) and sang harmony vocals.
It turned out that Egenes, who hails from Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a former
session musician who now works as a lecturer in contemporary music at the
University of Otago.

And there’s a lot more to him than that. Performing last
night at the Wairarapa home of Simon Burt and Pip Steele, Egenes revealed a genuine
cowboy pedigree. In a former life he worked as a horse trainer and, as a young man,
rode a quarter-horse coast-to-coast from California to Virginia. He attends
cowboy gatherings in places like Montana (we’re talking real cowboys here, not
the kind who are all hat and no horse), has friends on the rodeo circuit and
recites cowboy poems. He’s also well-connected in country music circles,
casually dropping illustrious names such as Townes van Zandt and Jerry Jeff
Walker. Oh, and he’s a skilled leather worker who makes saddles and carved the
beautiful leather cover wrapped around one of the two acoustic guitars he
played at last night’s house concert.

Egenes (it’s a Norwegian name, pronounced, as closely as I
can approximate it, as eggerness) mostly sings his own songs, accompanying
himself with a deft, fluid guitar style that melds traditional Merle
Travis-style country picking with a Delta-ish bluesy vibe. They’re charming, laconic,
often whimsical songs – many of them ostensibly about cowboys and horses, but with
a bit of philosophical depth and sometimes a satirical bite as well. He covers
other people’s songs too. His set last night included a laid-back, almost
Calypso-ish reworking of the rock and roll standard Sea Cruise – Frankie Ford would hardly have recognised it – and a
mellow rendering of the lovely Prairie
Lullaby, a song originally popularised in 1932 by Jimmie Rodgers. And while
Egenes left his mandolin and pedal steel guitar in Dunedin, he demonstrated the
breadth of his skills by playing banjo on several songs; not in a flashy way
but in the plain, affecting style that might once have been heard on warm
evenings on an Arkansas cotton-picker’s front porch.

This was the last of this year’s series of house concerts
hosted by Simon and Pip. They’ve now been going for five years (I wrote about the
first one here) and have established a loyal following. Simon has a knack for
finding little-known acts worthy of wider exposure, and Egenes (who has
recorded several CDs) is no exception.

Friday, November 20, 2015

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 18.)

I spent much of the weekend mowing
lawns and raking up leaves and other garden debris that had accumulated while
my wife and I were on holiday in the United States. The only thing disturbing
the peace – that is, once I’d turned the mower off – was the barking of a
neighbour’s dog.

Meanwhile, a world away, the
residents of Paris were locked indoors, reluctant to venture outside for fear
of another terrorist attack. There could hardly have been a more striking reminder
of how blessed we are, living in this remote and serene corner of the globe.

We can only hope that people
who migrate to New Zealand value and respect the fact that ours is a liberal,
humane, inclusive and relatively safe society, and that they commit themselves
to helping keep it that way. After all, it’s presumably a key reason why they
come here.

Not that we can afford to be
smug. We are part of a connected, global society and it’s impossible not to
share the anguish and anxiety that the people of France are going through right
now. Neither can we disconnect ourselves from international efforts to confront
and conquer the menace that is Islamist terrorism.

The Islamic State is a
uniquely challenging adversary, especially given that its followers appear to
have no fear of death – in fact, embrace the prospect of martyrdom. But the
fight against them is our fight too.

The Islamist assault on
liberal democratic values – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, women’s
equality, the rights of minorities generally – is a threat to us all. We can’t
pretend it’s not our concern simply because it hasn’t (yet) directly affected
us.

Recent events have sharpened
my awareness of other things besides our comfortable isolation in the southwest
Pacific. Four weeks in the US reminded me once again how insignificant we are
in world affairs.

I heard New Zealand mentioned
once in the news media. That was when I was listening to National Public Radio
late at night and heard a BBC news bulletin that referred briefly to the
pending Rugby World Cup final between the All Blacks and Australia.

Small reminders of home
intruded on us in unexpected, random ways. In Boston’s North Side, my wife
spied a delivery man wheeling a trolley laden with Yealands Estate wine from
Marlborough.

In the same city, I heard Weather With You by Crowded House being
played as the background to a radio weather forecast. And twice in public
places we heard Lorde’s hit song Royals
– once in a Subway outlet in the small town of Tejon, in California’s Central
Valley, and again in the same state when we were eating halibut and chips on
the deck of a seaside café at Morro Bay (a charming spot, by the way).

People have asked me whether
the RWC got any coverage in the US media. Fat chance. Rugby may be the
fastest-growing sport in America (albeit off a very low base), but the media were
interested only in American football, basketball and baseball.

Even universal sports such as
golf and tennis rated barely a mention amid the swathes of coverage devoted to
domestic sport, including college (i.e. university) football, which has a huge
following. In most of the bars we drank in, massive TV screens were permanently
tuned to sports channels showing the three popular codes.

(I love American bars all the
same. I like the way people sit at the bar and strike up conversations with
their neighbours. And American beer is superb. Thanks to the craft beer
revolution, the days when the only options were ghastly mass-produced beers
such as Miller and Budweiser – the beers they serve in Hell – are now but a grim
memory.)

Americans are equally
parochial when it comes to general news. Only the most sensational
international events, such as the explosion that brought down a Russian
airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, elbowed their way into news bulletins.
Mostly it was wall-to-wall coverage of the race for the presidency, with endless commentary and analysis of the main contenders.

I was reminded of a comment I
heard years ago from a New Zealand educationist who had lived for several years
in the US. Many Americans had no interest in the outside world, he said,
because America was their world.

This view is supported by
passport statistics. As recently as 1989, only 3 per cent of Americans held
passports, although the number has increased greatly over the past 20 years
(it’s now closer to 40 per cent, compared to roughly 75 per cent for New
Zealanders).

New Zealanders are certainly
far more aware than Americans of the outside world. We have to be, because
we’re at its mercy in a way bigger, more powerful countries are not.

Our isolation makes us
compulsive travellers, hungry for experience of other places. Yet our concerns
are often just as parochial as those of the Americans.

After four weeks away, my
wife and I returned to a country that was still agonising over the same issue
that dominated political debate when we left: the incarceration of people who
are technically New Zealand citizens (although they regard themselves as Australians,
in many cases having been brought up there) in what Peter Dunne rightly labelled
concentration camps.

Australia’s treatment of
New Zealand detainees is a disgrace, to be sure, and provides further proof that the supposed
Anzac bond is a fallacy. It also demonstrates that by comparison with ours, Australia's penal and judicial processes are harsh and vindictive. They learned well from their former colonial masters.But to put things in perspective, on a scale of one to
10 Australia's treatment of detainees is a two, or at most a three, compared with what the French were subjected
to last weekend.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

■ So why do bureaucrats and academics now begin every
statement with the word “so”?

■ Four and a half million New Zealanders, four and a half
million opinions on the flag?

■ Is it true Wellingtonians are prone to panic attacks if
there are no cafes within sight?

■ Why do highly paid government department CEOs (Ray Smith
of Corrections, for instance) refuse to be interviewed on current affairs
programmes? Shouldn’t it be written into their job description?

■ How hard would it be to pass a law requiring soft drink
manufacturers to place a simple symbol on cans and bottles showing how many
teaspoonfuls of sugar they contain?

■ Police keep urging us to “drive to the conditions”. So
where are they?

■ According to the “One News Now” promotional campaign, we
need our news instantaneously. But which is more important – immediacy, or
accuracy and depth?

■ Why are there so few women surgeons?

■ Could the answer to the previous question have anything to
do with the attitudes of some male surgeons?

■ Go Set a Watchman
– a contender for the 10 worst book titles of all time?

■ Why do smoke alarm batteries wait until the early hours of
the morning before announcing that they’re running low?

■ Had enough of the haka?

■ Remember the days when it was touch and go whether your
car (usually British) would start in the morning?

■ Are “devices” taking over your life?

■ Why do sports reporters refer to someone winning a
“famous” victory only moments after it happened? Doesn’t it take time for
something to become famous?

■ Fed up with pointless stickers plastered on every piece of
fruit you buy?

■ Why are there so few women chess players?

■ Time to ease off on that hackneyed phrase “the perfect
storm”?

■ State houses haven’t changed. The weather hasn’t changed.
So how is it that people who live in state houses are suddenly getting sick, supposedly
because of mould?

■ Saint Dave Dobbyn?

■ Shouldn’t someone point out to Winston Peters that addressing
opponents in parliament as “Sunshine” – presumably channelling Jack Regan of The Sweeney – is just a bit 1970s?

■ Given up trying to keep pace with technology?

■ Solid Energy goes belly-up, at enormous cost in money and
lost jobs, and the men who presided over its collapse walk away unscathed –
something wrong here?

■ Why are there so few women orchestra conductors?

■ When did photographs become “images”?

■ Big men endlessly lumbering back and forth from one end of
a court to another – is there any sport less interesting than basketball?

■ Are there any sociologists who aren’t Marxist?

■ Isn’t it time we dispensed with the tired (and just plain
wrong) cliche that it’s every New Zealand boy’s dream to become an All Black?

■ Why do radio and TV interviewers insist on straight “yes”
or “no” answers when there may be none?

■ When did we start calling lessons “learnings”?

■ Do people with British accents not see the irony in
phoning talkback shows to complain about the number of immigrants?

■ Saint Don McGlashan?

■ Graham Capill, Brian Tamaki, Colin Craig – is there some
immutable law that says leaders of socially conservative political parties and
pressure groups have to be a bit creepy?

■ That term "social media" – shouldn’t it really be
anti-social media?

■ What did New Zealand do to deserve Phil Rudd?

■ When did we start being bored “of” things, rather than
with them?

■ Do we make far too much fuss of our poets? I mean, how
many people actually read them?

■ Where is this place called New Zelland that John Key keeps
talking about?

■ Why do so many left-wing crusaders – Jane Kelsey, John
Minto, Professor Doug Sellman – have a desperate, haunted look? Is it because
they carry the terrible burden of having to save the world from itself?

■ Is Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy a bit thick, or
is that just the impression he gives?

■ Saint Nigel Latta?

■ What does it mean, exactly, when newsreaders say a
journalist is “across” the story?

■ In American movies about men suffering a mid-life crisis,
why does the main character always drive a Volvo?

Saturday, November 14, 2015

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 4.)

As you read this, I’m in the United States. It’s a country
I’ve visited several times, but it remains an enigma to me.

The people I meet here are friendly, courteous and helpful.
I see no trace of the crazy America that we read about in the headlines: the
mass shootings, the religious fundamentalism, the overheated patriotism, the
rabid political views, the nasty outbursts of apparently racist police
violence. I find it hard to reconcile these with the Americans I encounter.

It’s a country of extremes, which is probably inevitable
given its turbulent history, diverse populace and tradition of rambunctious
individualism. But in between those extremes, there’s a vast mass of ordinary
people just trying to get on with their lives – people whose values are not so
different from our own.

There’s another striking aspect of the American enigma
that’s very much on display right now: its politicians.

This is a dynamic country full of clever, energetic,
creative people. Even people who profess to despise America devour its culture.

We read American books, listen to American music, watch
American films and television, wear American-inspired clothes, are kept alive
by American drugs and rely on American technology. There’s hardly a place on
earth that isn’t influenced in some way by America.

So, given the incredibly rich human resources with which
it’s blessed, how is it that we see such a dispiriting line-up of candidates
for the presidency?

Surely in a nation of 320 million people – the country that
accomplished the most audacious feat in history by putting man on the moon – it
must be possible to find more inspiring candidates than those whom American
voters are currently considering for elevation to the most powerful political
office on earth?

The highest-profile Republican contender is a braying
braggart with a frighteningly simplistic, one-dimensional world view. If we
thought George W Bush was a monstrous practical joke, a President Donald Trump
would be an even more tragic mistake.

His pitch for the support of American voters seems to depend
on two things. One is his sneering criticism of the other Republican contenders;
the other is his reputation as a man untouched by political correctness. In the absence
of any coherent policy or vision, these are not convincing credentials for the
White House.

What of the leading Democratic contender, then?

Hillary Clinton is the polar opposite of Trump, and not just
in ideological terms. While he plays up his status as a maverick, untainted by
connections with the Washington establishment, Clinton is the consummate
political insider.

She’s capable, intelligent and a seasoned schmoozer. She has
a track record as Secretary of State and happens to be one half of the world’s
most famous power couple.

Her performance in TV debates, and under the blow torch
during a gruelling 11-hour congressional hearing into American deaths in a
terrorist attack for which her Republican rivals held her responsible (rather
unreasonably, it seems to me), has been polished and assured. She gives the
impression she would make a tougher and more decisive president than Barack
Obama.

But she has a few skeletons rattling around in her closet and opinion
polls suggest many Americans don’t trust her. Besides, the Clintons, like the
Bushes, have had their time in the White House.

Trump and Clinton aside, there’s a supporting cast of lesser
presidential hopefuls, consisting of the usual ragtag collection of egotists,
misfits, no-hopers and fumblers – proof that ambition and overweening
self-confidence can take you a long way in American politics even when there’s
a gaping ability deficit.

American TV satirists are never short of material, least of
all at election time. Some contenders for the White House seem unprepared for
questions on even the most basic policy issues.

You could call this the Sarah Palin Effect. The Republican
nominee for vice-president in the 2008 election had never travelled outside
America until 2007 and, when questioned, couldn’t name a single newspaper or
magazine that she regularly read. This presumably inspired her fellow Americans
with the realisation that anyone could run for high office.

It wasn’t always like this. American politics once resounded
with soaring, visionary rhetoric.

Consider the speeches of John F Kennedy, bits of which are
still routinely quoted more than 50 years after he died. Kennedy may have been
a shameless libertine – a man whose alley-cat personal morality was sharply at odds with
his virtuous public image – but he knew how to inspire his fellow Americans with words
that created a sense of hope and opportunity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, arguably the greatest US
president of the 20th century, had a similar gift. His “fireside
chats”, broadcast over the radio, reached into millions of homes and helped
carry America through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Like Kennedy, Roosevelt never talked down to his audience.
He spoke eloquently, even loftily, confident that his audience would get his
message – and they did.

Somewhere along the line, America has mislaid this element
of its political culture. I was reminded of this watching a recent documentary
film called The Best of Enemies,
which recalled a famous series of cerebral 1968 television debates between the
American intellectuals Gore Vidal, on the left, and William F Buckley Jr on the
right.

Both the protagonists struck me as thoroughly obnoxious, but
the debates, broadcast to coincide with the Democratic and Republican national conventions,
fizzed and sparked with vicious but sophisticated humour.

Broadcast in prime time on the ABC network during the presidential
primaries, the debates were a surprise ratings hit. It would never happen today
– a risk-averse media would dismiss the concept as too highbrow. And even more
sadly, the same is true in New Zealand.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

By now Richard Wagstaff
should be settling into his new job as president of the Council of Trade
Unions.

He’ll be very conscious of
the legacy he’s inherited. His predecessors include Fintan Patrick Walsh, Sir
Tom Skinner, Jim Knox and Ken Douglas.

Walsh was the closest New
Zealand has come to an American-style labour boss, feared and
hated in equal measure.

Skinner was a moderate and a
shrewd pragmatist, regarded with suspicion by some of his union brethren for
doing deals with National cabinet ministers late at night over a bottle of
Scotch.

Knox was a gruff but likeable
old-style blue-collar battler, a veteran of the 1951 waterfront confrontation
who took over what was then the Federation of Labour at a turbulent time when
the ground was rapidly shifting under his feet – sometimes too rapidly for him
to keep up.

Douglas, who remains active
in public life as a Porirua city councillor, was an avowed Marxist who had the
misfortune to preside over a movement that was fracturing under the strain of
change, and who was accused – unfairly, I believe – of selling out in his
efforts to hold things together.

Each was a household name in
his day, and a power in the land. Wagstaff is neither, and has little chance of
becoming one unless things change radically.

He takes over the leadership
of a union movement greatly weakened by economic upheaval and labour law
reform, but in many ways also greatly improved.

In the days of compulsory
union membership, which ended under Jim Bolger’s National government in 1991,
New Zealand was one of the most highly unionised economies in the world.

But while the law guaranteed
massive membership, it meant that unions were under no pressure to prove their
worth. The result was a plethora of small, weak unions with lazy officials who
collected members’ fees but didn’t do much else.

Paradoxical though it may
seem, compulsory unionism wasn’t viewed favourably by hard-core, militant
unions such as the seamen’s, freezing workers’ and watersiders’ unions. They
saw the movement as being weakened by all those thousands of shop and office
workers with no commitment to working-class solidarity and no interest in
fighting the class war.

It’s a very different picture
now. Unions represent only about 17 per cent of the labour force, but give the
impression of being far more responsive to their members’ needs. They have to
be, or they won’t survive.

The odd little craft unions
that once occupied every dusty nook and cranny of the Wellington Trades Hall
vanished long ago as industries were restructured – or in some cases wiped out
– and unions merged.

Simultaneously, union power
has shifted from traditional blue-collar industries to the white-collar sector.
Deregulation, economic reform and technological upheaval have destroyed the
power bases of once-formidable unions in industries such as freezing works and
car assembly plants.

These days it’s public sector
unions such as the teachers’ and nurses’ organisations, mostly dominated by
women, that have the big numbers. It’s enough to make grizzled old wharfies and
boilermakers weep.

One thing hasn’t changed,
though, and that’s the need for well-organised, effective unions. If anything,
they have become more important since the reforms of the 90s tilted the industrial
balance of power back in favour of employers.

Workers can’t rely on the
state to protect their interests. That was demonstrated at Pike River and in
the forestry industry, where the CTU successfully prosecuted employers over
workplace deaths after Workplace New Zealand declined to take action. Taking
bad employers to court isn’t high on the government’s priority list.

Zero-hours contracts are
another example of vulnerable workers needing someone to stand up for them.

The big problem for the
unions is that people have long memories. Many of us vividly remember the 1970s
and early 80s, when the economy was constantly sabotaged by bloody-minded
industrial disruption.

That ensured there was
precious little public sympathy for the unions when National stripped them of
their power.

But back to Wagstaff. He
seems personable, approachable and articulate, like his immediate predecessors
Helen Kelly and Ross Wilson.

That’s a good start. The
union leaders of earlier generations were often furtive
and hostile toward the media, whom they regarded as the tools of the ruling
class.

It’s different now. Public
relations is an essential part of the tool kit of the modern trade unionist as
the movement struggles to win back public respect.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

I’ve been out of the country for the past three weeks so have only just learned, via political scientist Bryce Edwards’ online political roundup, of the furore surrounding Westpac’s release to the police, without a court order, of private information relating to Nicky Hager.

Edwards details the angry reaction, from both left and right, to the bank’s compliance with the police request, which was reported by the New Zealand Herald.

From what I’ve read, that outrage is entirely justified. The episode confirms that Hager has been justified in sounding the alarm about surveillance and invasion of privacy. We are altogether too apathetic in assuming that agencies such as the police and the GCSB - not to mention corporates such as Westpac - will protect our rights and interests as citizens.

But having trawled through media comment on the issue, Edwards goes on to make a peculiar statement. He seems to suggest that because I wrote a column back in July arguing that Hager is not a journalist in the commonly understood definition of the word, I might not share the media concern about the apparent overriding of his right to privacy by the police and Westpac.

Not so. It’s one thing to dispute Hager’s claim to be a journalist; quite another to approve of the police delving into his private affairs without first having to satisfy a court that it’s justified. In fact I see no connection. Objecting to the way Hager's rights have been violated has nothing to do with whether he’s a journalist. The police action, and Westpac’s apparent complicity, would be just as obnoxious if he were a gravedigger or hairdresser.

As Edwards acknowledges, I said in my July column that Hager does some important work. I wrote that he could teach journalists a few things about uncovering information that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden. I also said his books made an important contribution to informed debate on issues such as state surveillance and honesty in government.

I stand by all that. My concerns about Hager are essentially twofold: first, that he uses the label “journalist”, with all its connotations of even-handedness and impartiality, to disguise his true purpose, which is that of an ideological crusader; and second, that the publication of his Dirty Politics book was carefully timed to coincide with a general election, in the clear hope that it would cause maximum political damage. But neither of those concerns could be construed as endorsement of any disregard for his rights or violation of his privacy.

I do, however, share Cameron Slater’s view that the reaction to the latest disclosures exposes a gaping double standard. Where was the media outrage when Slater’s email account was hacked?

There’s a difference, of course, in that this time it’s an agency of the state that’s digging into someone’s personal affairs. That’s infinitely more alarming than the actions of a rogue private hacker. But Slater is right to point out that the hacker, Rawshark, largely escaped media condemnation - as did Hager, who used the information Rawshark obtained.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.